Wholesale success at Canoe Polo

The Saints teams were training hard over inter-semester for the annual Scottish Universities’ Canoe Polo tournament. The competition was held in Glasgow over two days with a massive social on the Friday night after the first games and a ceilidh and prize giving on the Saturday night.

The tournament is always a cracker, with plenty of games and an intimidating atmosphere with so many people coming to support their team.

This year, Saints entered a Men’s A team, Men’s B team and Women’s team. The B team and Women’s teams have undergone some changes in the last year and it was the first time they had all played together.

The Men’s A team charged through their group stages, winning all of their matches, while the B team put in a confident performance to beat Stirling A and Edinburgh C, which put them through to the Plate final.

With the crowd cheering ‘when the Saints go marching in’, the Men’s A team faced Edinburgh A in the semi-finals.

Saints gave their all in an exhilarating match which was all too closely-fought, so close that Edinburgh eventually won by a sudden death goal after a full-time score of 2-2.

The Men’s B team’s Plate final (awarded to the best B teams) was also very close despite Saints being a much less experienced team, with a final score of 3-1 to Glasgow B.

Once again the Women’s side made it through to their competition final, despite there being a better overall standard of teams than last year. Saints ladies had to face Aberdeen, who were the only team to beat them during the group stages.

It was yet another exciting final and a very physical game, with both teams working hard on their defence but the match ended 3-1 to the mighty Aberdeen.

The St Andrews teams were surprised at the higher level of competition this year which resulted in some stunning matches all round, forcing them to raise their game to a new level.

A special mention goes to Patrick Jenner, for his superhuman goalkeeping powers and his continuing support of canoe polo. The club is thankful for his constant encouragement to the teams and for getting the club some shiny, new, fast boats!